Channel 4 FactCheck goes behind the spin to dig out the truth and separate political fact from fiction.

“In the UK and England at the moment we’ve got about 9 per cent of land developed. All we need to do is build on another 2-3 per cent of land and we’ll have solved a housing problem.”Nick Boles, 29 November 2012

The background

New planning minister Nick Boles caused quite a splash last night as he unveiled his vision of how we are going to beat the housing crisis.

The green belt – the bands of open land surrounding towns and cities that developers are forbidden to touch – will remain off limits.

But Mr Boles put himself on collision course with those who want to restrict new housing in the countryside by confirming that there will be no let-up in the government’s drive for more development in rural areas.

He told the BBC’s Newsnight programme: “We’re going to protect the greenbelt but if people want to have housing for their kids they have got to accept we need to build more on some open land.

“In the UK and England at the moment we’ve got about 9 per cent of land developed. All we need to do is build on another 2-3 per cent of land and we’ll have solved a housing problem.”

The Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) called on Mr Boles to “get serious” and said 12 per cent of England’s land is already built on, not 9 per cent.

The analysis

How much of the country is built on?

It depends which country you’re talking about, and Mr Boles’s meaningless reference to “the UK and England” doesn’t help us much there.

Since the Westminster government is only in charge of planning in England, that is presumably what Mr Boles ought to be focussing on.

Probably the best recent survey of land use across the UK is the National Ecosystem Assessment, which concludes that 10.6 per cent of England is classified as “urban”.

The figures for the rest of the UK are much lower – 4.1 per cent of Wales, 3.6 per cent of Northern Ireland and just 1.9 per cent of Scotland are made up of urban areas. So the average figure for the UK as a whole is 6.8 per cent.

These numbers are all based on satellite images collected in the Centre for Ecology and Hyrdology’s Land Cover Map 2000.

But a different methodology for calculating built-up areas, based on government population figures, yields higher estimates. Now 9.5 per cent of the UK and 14.6 per cent of England are considered urban.

So Mr Boles may be slightly playing down the urbanisation of England, but there are figures that put him in the right ballpark.

And his broader point, that urban sprawl is not as extensive as many of us might assume it to be, may well be right.

It’s worth noting that not all this “urban” land is covered in concrete. The category includes gardens, parks, allotments, playing fields and so on. Estimates of how much of the actual land classified as urban is really green space vary wildly from 14 to 54 per cent.

Right. Let’s get building then…

Hang on a minute. This doesn’t mean that 85 or 90 per cent of land in England is ready for the developers to roll in. Clearly, not all land is suitable for housebuilding, for a range of reasons.

Hilly, boggy or rocky land is probably out, as are areas prone to flooding or too near the coast. We haven’t yet come up with any sensible way of working out an accurate percentage of land unsuitable for development for physical reasons.

Then there are the national parks and green belt zones which are unlikely to be made available to developers for political reasons. Green belt land alone accounts for 13 per cent of England.

Perhaps most importantly of all, there’s the question of regional supply and demand.

We know that housebuilders are building far fewer houses than are needed to meet the demands of a growing population, but the gap is likely to be particulary acute in London and the South East.

Government projections are that there will be an average of around 230,000 extra households every year in England until 2033, and we are only managing to complete just over 100,000 properties.

The biggest population increases are expected in the capital and south east England. Housebuilding completions are in decline in both areas.

So when Mr Boles talks about increasing the amount of urban space in England by 2 or 3 per cent of the total area (about 1,500 square miles, or two Londons) it’s unlikely that this will be spread out equally around the whole of the country.

The lion’s share of the new development would probably take place in London, already by far the most crowded part of the UK, and the South East, the English region with the third hightest population density.

The verdict

Mr Boles hasn’t plucked the figure of 9 per cent out of thin air, and it’s interesting to note that urban sprawl covers a surprisingly small area.

But like many of the supposedly simple solutions to the housing crisis that have been proposed, building more homes in rural England is a bit more complicated than it looks.

Not that Mr Boles’s opponents have any quick fixes up their sleeve that really stand up to scrutiny either.

Filling empty homes would certainly help alleviate some of the pressure on housing, but it’s not a magic bullet.

At the latest count, there are 259,842 homes in England that have been empty for longer than six months, only 55,000 of them in London and the South East.

If we somehow managed to get all those homes filled overnight, that would only satisfy national demand for one year.

CPRE want the government to focus on previously-developed “brownfield” land – which they say could provide space for 1.5 million new homes.

But the Home Builders Federation, which represents the UK’s biggest developers, says the industry has already been building 80 per cent of its homes on brownfield sites in the last few years.

Government “brownfield first” policies have been tried in the past but haven’t worked, a spokesman told us. Some of the land is just too expensive and technically difficult to build on.

Brownfield is more suitable for blocks of flats but not larger homes with gardens, and the government found that land prices can be driven up even more in crowded areas, making things even harder for first-time buyers.

There are few easy answers, but Mr Boles’s comments give us an insight into where the political battle will be fought in the coming years.

Comments

Muggwhump
29-Nov-12at

But we don’t have years do we?
Lets face it if you are young today then you can expect to live your life in a bed-sit, you and your partner sleeping in the bed with the kids sleeping on mattresses on the floor.
We haven’t built enough homes for years and that isn’t an accident.
Why is it that government is always on the verge of doing something about housing but nothing ever seems to happen?
I think the real government policy is to strictly limit the supply of housing in order to control the price.
If they were really interested in housing people they’d be building 250,000 a year at least but with most homes 10 times the local wage they would have to be sold/rented at levels that would totally undermine the carefully propped up house price bubble.

I am intrigued as to who will purchase the proposed build of domestic dwellings – mortgages are currently difficult to obtain without some significant deposit – interest only mortgages are fading out – shared ownership is an absolute scam. Buy to let mortgages can only now be obtained with a substantial deposit being available from a buyer. I cannot see that developers will be giving dwellings away. Is there some propsal that I have not heard about that all these proposed dwellins will be bought up by Local authorities or Housing Associations and if so where will they get the money from for this. If they are considering building more office space – there is acres of the stuff already vacant and unoccupied.

As usual the Tories are backing their party donors in the house-building sector. Builders will always prefer the easy option – nice gentle rolling fields within commuting distance of large employment areas. No attempt at ‘sustainability’ (remember that one?) but making car ownership and large mileage essential to access work, schools, entertainment, leisure, shopping, etc.
1 make owning more than one house prohibitive
2 no more buy-to-let mortgages
3 encourage with local authority cash, improvement of poor and derelict housing stock.

Should be building upwards more. Vertical living is the way of the future and a higher pop-density has benefits up to a certain point. Demolish decrepit areas and build new urban hubs with opportunities for independent stores (don’t just create clone towns), efficient public transport and other infrastructure and ways to reinvigorate communities without them having to relocate. The more the UK is centralised on London and the SE, the more perilous the nation’s continued success shall become. It also makes more economic sense, unit prices in high-rise tend to be lower with the developer being able to make a lot for the amount of land purchased. At least, that’s how I optimistically chose to look at things.

Everyone constantly skirts around the real issue, which is that there are too many people, and we are increasingly too many. The fact that the existing potentially available housing stock in England would only do for a year is, frankly, horrifying. Until the real issue is addressed, this problem will never go away, no matter how much land is commandeered for housing.

The “housing crisis” can never be solved under the present economic system – you know, the “property owning democracy” introduced by Thatcher and her gangster cronies over a generation ago.

In fact it is a practical impossibility while we have 2.5 million unemployed and a quarter of our population living in poverty. It isn’t rocket science, it is straight forward arithmetic….whatever neocon mouthpieces like Policy Exchange and the Adam Smith “institute” claim.

We are very close to reintroduction of Rachmanism in a different guise. At this rate that is where we will be in less than another generation.

What then? Another “Cathy Come Home”? The spiv Boles probably depends on people forgetting that marvellous TV play of 1966. Now….what was it Santayana said about those who forget the past……….

There are plenty of houses available. Trouble is, in the Yorkshire Dales where I live the prices are too high for local wages and houses go to weekenders or for holiday lets. There are 13 houses in our street – 11 are mainly empty, only two being permanently occupied. Any new development here would have to be accessible to low income locals otherwise we’d just have another crop of holiday homes – which we don’t need.

INTERESTING POINTS OF VIEW
& they all have merit having carefully read all comments it seems to me that a combination of most of the ideas is needed
together at once
more high rises
more new towns or new villages
stop buy to let its already gone too far
perhaps a load of prefabs ..as starter homes to buy or cheap rent
seriously curb immigration we are a small island [relatively]
do away with deposits …its a huge unnecessary hurdle that is impossible for may
mostly the current crop of Tory buffoons each one sitting in there masturbatory ivory little towers in Westminster each contemplating its own navel …should grow some testicles and get on with what this countries PEOPLE NEED
as listed above
wayne